


Ziegler Variations, or, "The Pulsation of an Artery"

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-26
Updated: 2010-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 17:35:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loves come and loves go, but Seaborn & Ziegler last forever. A piece for a poet, a politician, and an affectionate dog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ziegler Variations, or, "The Pulsation of an Artery"

**Author's Note:**

> For Porn Battle IX, to the prompt 'ictus'. The alternative title is a quite from Blake's poem _Milton_, via Steve Reich. The bad poetry is my own.

_I look for you in the forgotten places, where I can lose your name like footprints in the subway -- just one more man, whose face I do not know, but recognise._

*

While Huck is reading the poem he is still, and every angle he makes is shallow, reticent, folding himself up in the invisibility of of being the voice of the words. Sam can feel the words making the air heavier, resting on everyone's tongues like a drop of honey-coated quicksilver.

Sam thinks it starts because of the impossibility of forgetting: both of them running away so fast that they end up back where they began; both pretending not to look for that which they are always seeking, running fingertips over the memory, tending the hurt with dirt and blood, not doing this because they want to but because they must.

When he gets back to Huck's place -- the narrow bed and the rotting brickwork and the smell of the kind of poverty only youth can bear -- he is sweating under his white shirt and against the knot of his nice tie. he walked ten blocks, in the heat, trying to get tired enough to leave this well alone. The muscles in his thighs are quivering: he's fifty-two now and it seems he can't put his body through this kind of thing anymore. He can feel the sweat gathering under his arms and prickling on his spine. He is too old for this.

He goes up the stairs to Huck's apartment slowly, his breath catching, his mind stumbling over some of the things Huck said to him, the secrets he told, under a spotlight, to an auditorium of three hundred people -- the skin, sweat, tastes, pains and cries he gave them.

Sam knocks, forgetting that he has a key.

Inside, in the light thrown by the opening of the door, visible only through the miasma of dust particles that have been flung up around his body: Huck. A thin tee shirt (green), jeans (black, with whitened patches of age over the thighs and the knees) that cling to his legs, no shoes, his hair too long (straight like Andrea's, black like Toby's) and his thin beard scratchy, shadowing his cheeks and casting shadows back towards his eyes. Huck has the flights of birds in his face, and the falls of snow, and the red stifled cries Sam has made alone in his own bed these last thirty years.

"I thought you weren't coming," Huck says.

"Where would I go?"

"Home?" he suggests, eyes glinting.

Sam smiles, without meaning it. "Where's that?" he says.

*

They aren't in love: that concept seems a long way away to both of them and important to each that it stays away. Huck is wearing away the rock grief made of his heart against the wind and rain, strength and endlessness of Sam's devotion to his family, to the name, to a second Ziegler, just like the first.

Sam loves the kid, in a way that might once have been platonic, because of who his parents are, who his father was. And because his own heart is eggshelled with age-old fractures he knows Huck will not mend but make worse. Sam doesn't care. He has a wife to be 'in love with' and children of his own to adore. Here, in this crappy Brooklyn apartment and in the words of the poetry books whose pages are as white as his old, monogrammed shirts, he holds on to the glitter of a diamond future he could never have had. Here, with Huck, he has misery, and the kind of sex life the newspapers would kill for an exclusive on.

He can see it now: Senator Seaborn's homosexual affair with the son of ex-White House staffer and almost-felon, the late Columbia professor of political relations, Toby Ziegler. The words are what undo him of course; the words give the lie to the suggestion of sweetness that blossoms on his tongue when he kisses Huck, and the bright, weightless joy he lies inside in their afterglow, like sunlight resting on his closed eyes, like the best days of summer, like peace. The words bring the night back down. The words -- the facts -- make it wrong. The words make him wonder why the first thing he does once the door is closed is to hold his hand out for Huck's and grasp it tightly, and slip his fingers around Huck's wrist, and pull that pale square of skin up to his mouth and suck the veins up against his tongue. He tastes both milk-sweet and salt, as he always does -- twenty-two and still looking all of fifteen, except for the crow-tracks that make up his eyebrows which are black and always angled in a way that, to Sam, looks unforgiving; brows and beard -- the darknesses that Sam asked him to visit on himself when he whispered, wet-lipped: _let it grow, please, for next time, Huck, please_.

But Sam lets go of Huck's wrist and shifts his hands to the boy's face -- soft cheeks underneath the stubble, still a little rounded, warm with a blush that even Huck's ability to drown his own emotions, cannot hide. Sam smiles.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You write those poems specifically?"

"You've read them before."

"I was there when you wrote them."

"Exactly."

"Huck -- "

"Sam, everyone thinks I have some incredibly unsuitable boyfriend with whom I'm working out all the daddy issues I picked up in the last forever, but I don't think even the National Enquirer would make two plus two equal five in this case. Even if they gave a damn about CCNY poetry readings."

"That's not what I meant."

"Yes, it was. It always is."

"I don't mean it to be," Sam says, quietly.

"I know. But it always is."

"Huck, I -- "

He doesn't get any further: Huck kisses the way Sam always hoped to learn that Toby did; the way that turns language, logic and reasoning down to a low buzz somewhere in Sam's head; somewhere he does not care to remember fast becoming somewhere he cannot remember. Huck is a heavy thing in Sam's arms, all angles and sweat and the taste that bears no description, that Sam never tasted the like of anywhere else. He bends his head down, he closes his eyes.

They fall into the bed as Huck's tee rips in Sam's fists, as Sam's tie makes ligature marks on his neck as Huck tries to tear it off, as Sam's elbow smashes into Huck's jaw, as Huck's nails tear into the flesh of Sam's belly, as Sam's teeth draw blood from Huck's lips, as Huck's hipbones crush into Sam's shoulders, as Sam makes Huck scream, as Huck makes Sam come.

*

Later, when the thing inside Sam that craves this particular oblivion has quietened, they turn back into people their friends would recognise. Sam lies between Huck's legs, sweat running into his eyes, lingering over the kernel of tenderness that makes this month's encounter something other than abuse. Huck quivers when Sam touches him, sometimes; he is more afraid of sweetness than he ever is of violence, which Sam can't help thinking is one more thing that makes them a poor match for each other. But Sam loves this: the stutter in Huck's skin, the blush, the moans on the edge of their hearing, the weight of his cock in Sam's mouth.

Sam shifts to get a better angle, withdraws and swallows. Huck doesn't look up. His fingers are fisted in the sheets. Sam leans in close again, hums quietly as he opens his mouth around the head of Huck's cock and lays his tongue flat against its underside, and licks, languorously. Huck's left hand unbuckles from the bedclothes and begins to stroke Sam's hair, slowly, as carefully as he can when he is thirty seconds from his orgasm. And Huck loves blowjobs. They even make it into the poetry.

When he gets close he starts to whimper, just a little, then takes in a series of deep breaths, breathing out Sam's name, letting the vowel elongate in a way that pricks at Sam's belly, remembering. As Huck comes Sam withdraws again, letting the semen burst onto his cheek, stain his neck, gather at his throat. He kisses Huck's thighs, the desperate, shaking muscle, and strokes his fingers over the hair which is thick over Huck's shin bones, and passes his thumb over and over the hard knot of Huck's knee.

*

Later still, from inside Sam's arms, his head resting with what looks very like contentment against Sam's chest, Huck says: "Do you think about him, during?"

"Huck, it's not -- "

"It's okay if you do. I do. Sometimes."

"I miss him," Sam says, like it's a real confession and has some weight as a secret, as though everyone in Sam's life doesn't already know about the part of him that is missing now, always missing now.

"Yeah. Me too."

"There were things ... before, things I thought I could never do, things _my_ father did. Here I am, doing all of them."

Huck chuckles, mirthlessly. "What did he do, your dad?"

"There was a woman. Who wasn't my mother."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Sam -- "

"I should let you go. Go home, like you said."

"I'd rather you didn't."

Sam's turn to laugh without warmth. "Yeah."

"Everyone needs a dark side, Sam. Even you."

"Oh yeah?"

"And me too. I'm not a kid. I'm here too."

Sam asks the first question that presents itself: "Does Molly know?"

"She guesses. She's scary accurate. Usually at least -- she hasn't actually asked the question."

"Twin osmosis."

Huck shakes his head. When Sam looks down at him he rolls his eyes. "That really doesn't exist."

"Molly's just amazing that way."

"Something like that."

Sam kisses him, on impulse, wanting to say things which aren't really so true and so losing them in Huck's open mouth instead. Huck's return is tender, and surprised by its own tenderness, and there is a moment -- so brief that as soon as it has passed Sam wonders if it was ever there -- when he wonders: could we do this? could we make it? is there something here better than grief and old hurts?

*

All through this, in the sagging centre of a bean bag so patched and frayed that Sam always wonders how it can be that the beans aren't providing a slapstick hazard all across Huck's apartment floor, the dog lies sleeping. He was Toby's dog, some kind of setter, middle-aged now and fond of sleeping -- able to sleep through any of the very human activities that his master and his master's friend indulge in -- and named, unrepentantly, Princeton.

Toby had said: It's a good name for a dog. And you're a good namesake for one. Name, temperament ...

Sam had protested: Toby!

Toby had smiled, his slow unfolding smile: Sweet-tempered, glossy coat, eager to go for walks with me. What else am I going to name him?

And Sam had smiled, and nodded, and loved him so much that he went away with a pain in his chest. The dog had recognised Sam straight away, and treats him now like a brother he doesn't see often enough, and sits with his chin on Sam's knee when the three of them spend more than ten minutes on Huck's couch.

Sometimes, when Princeton is nestled between their feet at the end of Huck's bed, Sam wonders if the dog is trying to say: don't worry so much, stop wallowing in your stupid human guilt, stay here where there are warm bodies and soft hearts. Sometimes Sam thinks that if the dog can love them both so much, as it loved Toby, then maybe the wrongs, the darknesses, are not so great. But a dog will love almost any master.

*

Sam turns back to his lover and strokes his hair, his beard, over his closed eyes, over his mouth, over his throat. He wishes, as he has been wishing for weeks now, through four or five of these encounters, through the sweating, squirming moments in that auditorium and the moments, back in California, when he looks at his wife and his children and is full of terror because he cannot remember his excuses, he wishes he could say: I love you. He wishes he could make it mean what it _should_ mean, what he had felt it meant when he looked at Huck's father and felt it go through his head as a looping refrain, making everything both terrible and wonderful. He wishes he had one good thing to set against the bad: this boy, whom I love.

*

"Dad said you do this," Huck says, eyes still closed, his cheek resting against Sam's collarbone. "I didn't believe him, but he's right."

"What?"

"I know exactly what you're thinking, Sam. And if _you'd_ only think about it, the stuff that's going through your head right now? That's what makes you a good man. That's it, right _there_." His hand is resting, as though it means nothing at all, on the left side of Sam's breast.

"I'm in bed," Sam begins, "In Brooklyn, a continent away from my family and my job and my responsibilities, with the twenty-two year old son of my dead former boss and friend, who I was in love with for ... for a long time."

"Yeah, but on the other hand, listen to how you just laid all that out. No hedging, no prevarication. I'm still so amazed you're in politics."

Sam smiles. "Funny boy."

"Would your father have been able to say all that? To you? To your mom? To the woman in Santa Monica."

"I never said anything about Santa Monica."

"No, I know."

"It doesn't ... _saying_ it doesn't -- "

"No, it doesn't. But it counts for something. As does the fact that I don't fuck bad guys."

Sam laughs, softly, and puts his head down next to Huck's.

*

As night starts to fall Princeton wakes up, leaps up onto the bed where both Sam and Huck are sleeping, licks Huck's face and then Sam's, pants loudly in their ears and suggests, oh so subtly, that it is time for a walk.

Sam splutters, but Huck laughs and tugs on a pair of boxers, his jeans and a different tee shirt and sets about the dog, ruffling its great shaggy ears with his hands, rubbing his cheeks against its cold, wet nose.

Huck says: Are you coming?

Sam lies in the bed with his head swallowed by pillows and his nose full of the smell of dust and mildew that festoons this apartment, and his mouth full of the ways that Huck tastes and the shapes his shape makes inside the close of Sam's lips.

Sam thinks: Is it enough that we seem to need each other, because there isn't anyone else? And that now the bridge is down but the rain keeps falling, both banks are floating closer together, shifting criminally, inexorably, badly, with fault lines running under the mud, together? Is that enough? Cling to each other, are we drowning, or keeping each other afloat, waving to the shore?

*

_I have looked for you and I have found you, and I know the seeking and the remembering have led me low. But there is sweetness, darling, in the place you have forgotten was your heart, and it will never dry or shallow or stop. And I will drink it down, this sweetness, nor will I ever stop. And if you love me just a little, in echoes and shadows and hurts, it will all be even, it will be well sought. We will turn corners, in the future, dear one, on streets we don't yet know -- but I will be there, smiling shadows, dancing drownings, hold my hand, don't let go._


End file.
